EcoHealth Alliance
EcoHealth Alliance was a US-based non-governmental organization with a stated mission of protecting people, animals, and the environment from emerging infectious diseases. The nonprofit organization focused on research aimed at preventing pandemics and promoting conservation in hotspot regions worldwide.
The EcoHealth Alliance focused on diseases caused by deforestation and increased interaction between humans and wildlife. The organization researched the emergence of diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, Nipah virus, Middle East respiratory syndrome, Rift Valley fever, the Ebola virus, and COVID-19.
The EcoHealth Alliance also advised the World Organization for Animal Health, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and the World Health Organization on global wildlife trade, threats of disease, and the environmental damage posed by these.
Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, EcoHealth's ties with the Wuhan Institute of Virology were put into question in relation to investigations into the origin of COVID-19. Citing these concerns, the National Institutes of Health withdrew funding to the organization in April 2020. Significant criticism followed this decision, including a joint letter signed by 77 Nobel laureates and 31 scientific societies. The NIH later reinstated funding to the organization as one of 11 institutions partnering in the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases initiative in August 2020, but all activities funded by the grant remain suspended.
In 2022, the NIH terminated the EcoHealth Alliance grant, stating that "EcoHealth Alliance had not been able to hand over lab notebooks and other records from its Wuhan partner that relate to controversial experiments involving modified bat viruses, despite multiple requests." In 2023, an audit by the Office of Inspector General, U.S. [Department of Health and Human Services|Office of Inspector General of the United States Department of Health and Human Services] found that "NIH did not effectively monitor or take timely action to address" compliance problems with the EcoHealth Alliance. In December 2023, the EcoHealth Alliance denied allegations that it double-billed the NIH and United States Agency for International Development for research in China. In May 2024, the United States Department of Health and Human Services banned all federal funding for the EcoHealth Alliance. As of April 2025, EcoHealth Alliance has ceased operations in favour of another non-profit initiative called "Nature.Health.Global", also led by Daszak.
History
Founded under the name Wildlife Preservation Trust International in 1971 by British naturalist, author, and television personality, Gerald Durrell, it then became The Wildlife Trust in 1999. In the fall of 2010, the organization changed its name to EcoHealth Alliance. The rebrand reflected a change in the organization's focus, moving solely from a conservation nonprofit, which focused mainly on the captive breeding of endangered species, to an environmental health organization with its foundation in conservation.The organization held an early professional conservation medicine meeting in 1996. In 2002, they published an edited volume on the field through Oxford University Press: Conservation Medicine: Ecological Health in Practice.
In February 2008, they published a paper in Nature entitled "Global trends in emerging infectious diseases" which featured an early rendition of a global disease hotspot map. Using epidemiological, social, and environmental data from the past 50 years, the map outlined regions of the globe most at risk for emergent disease threats.
EcoHealth Alliance's funding came mostly from U.S. federal agencies such as the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and U.S. Agency for International Development. Between 2011 and 2020, its annual budget fluctuated between US$9 and US$15 million per year.
COVID-19 pandemic
Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, EcoHealth Alliance was the subject of controversy and increased scrutiny due to its ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology —which has been at the center of speculation since early 2020 that SARS-CoV-2 may have escaped in a lab incident. Prior to the pandemic, EcoHealth Alliance was the only U.S.-based organization researching coronavirus evolution and transmission in China, where they partnered with the WIV, among others. EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak co-authored a February 2020 letter in The Lancet condemning "conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin". However, Daszak failed to disclose EcoHealth Alliance's ties to the WIV, which some observers noted as an apparent conflict of interest. In June 2021, The Lancet published an addendum in which Daszak disclosed his cooperation with researchers in China.In April 2020, the NIH ordered EcoHealth Alliance to cease spending the remaining $369,819 from its current NIH grant at the request of the Trump administration, pressuring them by stating "it must hand over information and materials from the Chinese research facility to resume funding for suspended grant" in reference to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The canceled grant was supposed to run through 2024. Funding from NIH resumed in August 2020 after an uproar from "77 U.S. Nobel laureates and 31 scientific societies".
Work conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology under an NIH grant to the EcoHealth Alliance has been at the center of political controversies during the pandemic. One such controversy centered on whether any experiments conducted under the grant could be accurately described as "gain-of-function" research. NIH officials unequivocally denied during 2020 congressional hearings that the EcoHealth Alliance had conducted GoF research with NIH funding.
In October 2021, the EcoHealth Alliance submitted a progress report detailing the results of a past experiment where some laboratory mice lost more weight than expected after being infected with a modified bat coronavirus. The NIH subsequently sent a letter to the congressional House Committee on Energy and Commerce describing this experiment, but did not refer to it as "gain-of-function." Whether such research qualifies as "gain-of-function" is a matter of considerable debate among relevant experts.
In May 2024, the United States Department of Health and Human Services banned all federal funding for the EcoHealth Alliance, saying that the EcoHealth Alliance did not properly monitor research activities at the WIV and failed to report on their high-risk experiments.
On January 17, 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services issued formal, 5-year debarments for both Daszak and his group. EcoHealth Alliance had dismissed Daszak as president as of January 6, according to an HHS notice.